The Chicago Tribune reports that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel hopes to take millions of dollars from soft-drink companies to pay for government worker health care. On Monday, he stood with executives from three giant soda-makers to announce the city will compete against San Antonio for a $5 million national beverage lobbying group grant that will reward city workers for being healthy rather than making it tougher or more expensive for them to guzzle sugary pop.
New video discourages sugary drink consumption
USA Today reports that the Center for Science in the Public Interest has released a new anti-sugary-drink video designed to show the ill effects of drinking too many sugary beverages. The papa bear in the animated video, The Real Bears, not only suffers from erectile dysfunction, but also contracts type 2 diabetes, which forces him to have a “grizzly” leg amputation. The video ends with the polar bear family pouring their cola into the ocean. The video is available online.
African-American Youth Exposed to More Magazine and Television Alcohol Advertising than Youth in General
By Center on Alcohol Marketing to Youth
African-American youth ages 12-20 are seeing more advertisements for alcohol in magazines and on TV compared with all youth ages 12-20, according to a new report from the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The report is available on CAMY’s website, www.camy.org.
The report analyzes alcohol exposure by type and brand among African-American youth in comparison to all youth. It also assesses exposure of African-American youth to alcohol advertising relative to African-American adults across various media venues using the most recent year(s) of data available.
Alcohol is the most widely used drug among African-American youth, and is associated with violence, motor vehicle crashes and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. At least 14 studies have found that the more young people are exposed to alcohol advertising and marketing, the more likely they are to drink, or if they are already drinking, to drink more.
“The report’s central finding—that African-American youth are being over-exposed to alcohol advertising—is a result of two key phenomena,” said author David Jernigan, PhD, the director of CAMY. “First, brands are specifically targeting African-American audiences and, secondly, African-American media habits make them more vulnerable to alcohol advertising in general because of higher levels of media consumption. As a result, there should be a commitment from alcohol marketers to cut exposure to this high-risk population.”
The report finds certain brands, channels and formats overexpose African-American youth to alcohol advertisements:
- Magazines: African-American youth saw 32 percent more alcohol advertising than all youth in national magazines during 2008. Five publications with high African-American youth readership generated at least twice as much exposure to African-American youth compared to all youth: Jet (440 percent more), Essence (435 percent more), Ebony (426 percent more), Black Enterprise (421 percent more), and Vibe (328 percent more ). Five brands of alcohol overexposed African-American youth compared to all youth and to African-American adults: Seagram’s Twisted Gin, Seagram’s Extra Dry Gin, Jacques Cardin Cognac, 1800 Silver Tequila, and Hennessey Cognacs.
- Television: African-American youth were exposed to 17 percent more advertising per capita than all youth in 2009, including 20 percent more exposure to distilled spirits advertising. Several networks generated at least twice as much African-American youth exposure to alcohol advertising than all youth: TV One (453 percent more), BET (344 percent more), SoapNet (299 percent more), CNN (130 percent more) and TNT (122 percent more).
- Radio: African-American youth heard 26 percent less advertising in 2009 for alcohol than all youth on stations with the most advanced measurement data available; however, they heard 32 percent more radio advertising for distilled spirits. In these markets, four station formats delivered more alcohol advertising exposure to African-American youth than to African-American adults: Contemporary Hit/Rhythmic (104 percent more), Contemporary Hit/Pop (14 percent more), Urban (13 percent more) and Hot Adult Contemporary (43 percent more).
“Alcohol products and imagery continue to pervade African-American youth culture, despite the well known negative health consequences,” said Denise Herd, PhD, an associate professor with the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health who reviewed the report. “The findings of this report make clear immediate action is needed to protect the health and well-being of young African Americans.”
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey, about one in three African-American high school students in the U.S. are current drinkers, and about 40 percent of those who drink report binge drinking. While alcohol use and binge drinking tend to be less common among African-American adults than among other racial and ethnic groups, African-American adults who binge drink tend to do so more frequently and with higher intensity than non-African Americans.
In 2003, trade groups for beer and distilled spirits committed to placing alcohol ads in media venues only when underage youth comprise 30 percent of the audience or less. Since that time, a number of groups and officials, including the National Research Council, the Institute of Medicine and 24 state attorneys general, have called upon the alcohol industry to strengthen its standard and meet a “proportional” 15 percent placement standard, given that the group most at risk for underage drinking—12 to 20 year-olds—is less than 15 percent of the U.S. population.
Half of gun dealers report it’s too easy for criminals to get guns
The first study to survey owners and senior executives of federally licensed firearms dealers and pawnbrokers, published online in the Journal of Urban Health, found that 54.9 % believed that “it is too easy for criminals to get guns in this country. Garen Wintemute, director of the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program, and author of the study said that these groups are “valuable sources of information on retail commerce in firearms, links between legal and illegal gun sales, and policies designed to prevent the firearms that they sell from being used in crimes.”
Auto rental companies agree not to rent recalled cars
The four largest U.S. rental car companies have agreed to park vehicles facing a recall until the defect has been repaired, and lent their support to legislation to make such a policy the law, reports the Los Angeles Times. The move by Hertz Corp., Avis Budget Group Inc., Enterprise Holdings Inc. and Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group Inc., which represent 93% of the market, followed a years-long quest by the mother of two victims of a fatal crash and auto safety advocates to keep rental cars with known problems off the road.
University of California at Davis Reports Make Dubious Claims on Prop 37
Cross posted from Appetite for Profit
Last week I wrote about how the No on 37 campaign – the California ballot initiative that would require labeling of GMOs foods – is relying on experts with questionable credentials to do its bidding. Over the past few weeks, two expert reports have emerged from the No campaign that also warrant closer scrutiny.
The first, entitled “California’s Proposition 37: Effects of Mandatory Labeling of GM Food,” was co-authored by University of California at Davis professor Colin Carter and published in the newsletter of the University of California Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics. It’s not clear if the report was funded by the No campaign since the article doesn’t say one way or the other.
Regardless of the financial support, the article contains at least one glaring error that’s big enough to call into question the entire piece, along with the authors’ credibility. And right in the first paragraph: “The California initiative would implement a zero-tolerance policy for accidental presence of small amounts of GM substances.” In fact, Prop 37 specifically focuses on the deliberate use of GMO ingredients and exempts accidental occurrences. (This can happen due to drifting of GMO seeds to organic or non-GMO crops.)
To be clear, Prop 37 does not require labels on foods that were unintentionally and/or unknowingly contaminated by genetically engineered seed or food. If you don’t believe me, read the language yourself.
Much of the article is based on this erroneous assertion. For example, the authors complain about how farmers could not adhere to this standard; that the standard is higher than that of other nations, and even higher than the U.S. organic standard. But none of this is true, which makes reading the entire article very confusing.
Parke Wilde, a professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, recently blogged about Carter’s error and how the Oakland Tribune picked up on it, furthering the confusion about what initiative requires.
In his post entitled, “Incorrect reports say that California’s Prop 37 has zero tolerance for accidental GMO content,” Wilde says that even when he emailed Carter about the matter, he “didn’t really back up this claim that the initiative takes a zero-tolerance position on accidental contamination.” So a University of California professor gets the basic facts wrong and then when asked about it by a colleague, evades the question. Not exactly a trustworthy source.
The article comes to other exaggerated conclusions such as “certified non-GM processed food products will virtually disappear from food stores” but without any actual analysis or scientific basis for such a dramatic claim. The article contains no citations; presumably this is the format of the publication, but it makes understanding the basis for the authors’ conclusions almost impossible.
A second report also from University of California at Davis professors makes similarly unsubstantiated claims about how non-GMO foods would just disappear from the market, along with wild predictions about increased food costs.
That article, entitled, “Proposition 37 – California Food Labeling Initiative: Economic Implications for Farmers and the Food Industry if the Proposed Initiative were Adopted,” is co-authored by UC Davis professors Julian Alston and Daniel Sumner. According to the report, “The work for this project was undertaken with partial funding support from No on 37.” The Los Angeles Times reported that the No campaign paid the authors “at least $30,000.”
Alston has previous ties to Monsanto, according to this Sacramento Bee article from 2004, which explains the relationship:
In July 2002, UC Davis farm economics professor Julian Alston found a patron in the private sector: Monsanto, one of the world’s five largest crop biotechnology firms. The official announcement came in the form of a letter. “Dear Dr. Alston,” it read. “Please find enclosed a check for $40,000 that represents an unrestricted gift in support of your research program.”
That same in-depth story (well worth the long read) paints UC Davis as a research incubator for Big Biotech: “You name it, and biotechnology companies help pay for it at UC Davis: laboratory studies, scholarships, post-doctoral students’ salaries, professors’ travel expenses, even the campus utility bill.”
The No on 37 campaign released the recent report with this dramatic headline: “UC Davis Professors of Agricultural Economics Release New Report that Shows Proposition 37 Will Increase Costs for California Farmers and Food Processors by $1.2 Billion.” The report makes a number of other claims, mostly based on questionable assumptions. As for the $1.2 billion in increased food costs, the figure assumes food makers would substitute non-GMO ingredients, which the authors base upon what happened in Europe upon mandatory labeling. However, there is no evidence to suggest the food industry will respond the same way here. The European Union has a much longer history of opposing GMOs then we do in the U.S. so it’s really not a fair comparison. At the very least, we just don’t know. Proposition 37 only requires labeling, not reformulation.
Once again, most of the authors’ additional conclusions are based on this one faulty assumption. For example, they claim that passage of Prop 37 and the ensuing “complete switch to GE varieties” would cause harm to farmers and the environment, result in high compliance costs for industry, as well as place California agriculture at a competitive disadvantage. But these are just the authors’ speculative opinions, based on faulty assumptions.
Moreover, this report is not published in a peer-reviewed publication; in fact, it’s not published anywhere, except on the No on 37 website. And while the No campaign made sure we knew the two authors are UC Davis professors (it’s mentioned several times on this page) apparently the authors needed to include this disclaimer next to their bios: “Titles are for identification only. The report is the authors’ independent work and not a product of the University of California.”
So both the authors and the No on 37 campaign gets to have it both ways. They can claim the University of California affiliation without making their work a product of UC. Whatever the affiliation or funding source, both of these reports should be dismissed as merely the unsubstantiated opinions of a few academics, as opposed to reliable scientific analysis backed up by peer review.
Alcohol industry in Australia grooming children to drink by marketing booze-flavored snacks, AMA claims
Australia’s Brisbane Courier Mail reports that a new report by the Australian Medical Association describes how the alcohol industry is using online games that feature alcohol brands, secret parties with online invitations and Facebook to market alcohol to young people. The AMA report says alcohol-sponsored mobile phone apps that provide cocktail recipes, conversation topics or use geolocation technology to recommend nearby bars and clubs are aimed at the young. The industry has also encouraged children to develop a taste for alcohol by marketing Tim Tams flavored with Tia Maria, chocolates flavored with Malibu, vodka flavored lip gloss and fudge and potato chips flavored with Jim Beam whisky, the report says.
A Call for Caution on Antipsychotic Drugs
The number of annual prescriptions for atypical antipsychotics rose to 54 million in 2011 from 28 million in 2001, a 93 percent increase, according to IMS Health. One study found that the use of these drugs for indications without federal approval more than doubled from 1995 to 2008. In a column in The New York Times, Dr. Richard Bernstein notes that originally experts believed the new drugs were more effective than the older antipsychotics against such symptoms of schizophrenia. However, several recent large randomized studies failed to show that the new antipsychotics were any more effective or better tolerated than the older drugs.
The Public Health Consequences of Externalities
In economics, an externality is defined as an indirect consequence of production or consumption that affects not the producer or consumer but a third party — society as a whole or some sub-population. Because the costs and benefits of externalities are not included in the price of the product, externalities have the potential to distort markets, where prices are theorized to reflect the “real” value. Positive externalities bring benefits to the third party; negative externalities impose costs. Below are some examples of positive and negative externalities.
Positive Corporate Externalities
- A workplace vaccination program reduces absenteeism for the company but also benefits society as a whole by slowing spread of infectious diseases.
- Insurance discounts for those who complete driver education programs can reduce payouts for company, costs and accidents for drivers, and motor vehicle injury rate for society.
- Voluntary installation of pollution control systems can win a manufacturer a tax break, benefit nearby residents by lowering pollution and benefit society as a whole by lowering pollution-related costs.
Negative Corporate Externalities
- Air pollution from industrial manufacturing contributes to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and cancer, agricultural damage and climate change.
- Tobacco use leads to increased hospitalizations and lost productivity, the costs of which are borne by tax payers and government.
- Industrial production of meat led to farms that were easier to run, with fewer and often less-skilled employees, and a greater output of uniform animal products. Social costs include contributing to the increase in the pool of antibiotic-resistant bacteria because of the overuse of antibiotics; air quality problems; the contamination of rivers, streams, and coastal waters with concentrated animal waste; animal welfare problems, mainly as a result of the extremely close quarters in which the animals are housed.
One important reason that corporations contribute to premature death and preventable illnesses and injuries is that they are able to externalize, i.e., shift to consumers, taxpayers, or society as a whole, the real costs of production or consumption of the products they manufacture. In this commentary, I explain how corporate externalities contribute to public health problems. In a later post, I will explore a few proposals to improve population health by requiring corporations to “internalize” these external costs back into the price, thus reducing socially subsidized use. My larger purpose is to encourage public health professionals and researchers to focus more closely on public health externalities and the development of strategies to promote positive and reduce negative externalities.
Because manufacturers of goods (or services) that impose negative externalities are not required to pay these costs, the public subsidy increases profits for the maker. Companies therefore tend to produce more of that product, which in turn magnifies the adverse impact on population health. In effect, negative externalities initiate a vicious circle of more sales, more profits, more subsidies and more disease. Examples include the dramatic expansion of the production and marketing of cigarettes, alcoholic beverages and unhealthy food such as fast food, sugary beverages and processed snacks in the second half of the twentieth century.
Since the overall cost and benefit to society is defined as the sum of the economic benefits and costs for all parties involved, the cost accounting that looks only at producers and consumers misses the externalities. Unlike those who “decide” to produce or consume goods, those who suffer from external costs do so involuntarily, creating an additional moral and political problem. In free market economic theory, an efficient market finds the ideal price for a good or service, defined as the price that best promotes the general welfare of society given the supply and demand. In reality, however, most transactions include some unforeseen externalities that confer costs or benefits on society at large and disrupt this theoretical efficiency. This tendency is amplified because in general neither corporations nor consumers account for such externalities when they make their transactions. What fast food outlet or customer considers who is going to pay for the diabetes treatment services that are attributable to aggressive marketing of unhealthy food? In some cases, this oversight results from the difficulties of determining the scope and costs of such externalities in the context of an individual transaction.
In other cases, however, corporations hide information that would allow consumers to make more informed choices. The tobacco industry’s comprehensive knowledge of the social costs of tobacco use revealed by the tobacco documents released as part of various court settlements illustrates this non-disclosure dramatically. Other industries have also hidden such information. In this way, market practice again departs from classical economic theory, in which both consumers and producers have equal access to relevant information. The problem of asymmetrical access to information further compounds the problem of negative externalities. The public that ends up paying the cost of these externalities e.g., tobacco, alcohol or unhealthy food-related diseases, does not even know they are being stuck with the tab.
To correct these problems, governments can seek to force companies to internalize externality costs. This means that if a company’s pollution creates economic costs (for example, the medical bill of a patient who gets sick from pollution), and then the government will force the company to pay that cost. In this way, the company can more accurately compare revenues and expenses and decide whether production is indeed profitable. In a future post, I’ll describe some of the proposals to achieve this goal.
For more on externalities and public health:
Biglan A. Corporate externalities: a challenge to the further success of prevention science. Prev Sci. 2011;12(1):1-11.
Carande-Kulis VG, Getzen TE, Thacker SB. Public goods and externalities: a research agenda for public health economics. J Public Health Manag Pract. 2007;13(2):227-32.
Global Diet and Sustainability Assessing the negative externalities of animal agriculture: A conference in New York City, October 12, 2012
Lustig RH, Schmidt LA, Brindis CD. Public health: The toxic truth about sugar. Nature. 2012; 482(7383):27-9.
Food makers hook kids on mobile games
U.S. food companies are reaching children by embedding their products in simple and enticing games for touch-screen phones and tablets, reports the Wall Street Journal. The new medium is far cheaper than Saturday morning TV commercials and could prove as effective. The mobile games demonstrate how new technology is changing U.S. commerce, drawing tighter bonds between marketers and young consumers. “The apps are certainly targeted at kids,” said Melinda Champion, vice president of marketing at J&J Snack Foods Corp. in New Jersey, which makes SuperPretzel and Icee drinks. “If you get the kids saying, ‘Mom, I would love a SuperPretzel,’ mom will often buy it for them.”
Corporations and Health Watch 